It took almost a year to discover all of the near misses.

First was Ohio, just a few hours after they met, when Kurt told Blaine he was supposed to be leaving for Christmas, that he hadn’t been home since July. It took a few more details, punctuated, of course, with kisses and I can’t believe I found you, but eventually they worked out how close they’d been, on a summer’s afternoon, to meeting again a world away from here.

Kurt cancelled his flight. They spent Christmas beneath his duvet, emerging only to raid the cupboards for some semblance of a meal, giving up quickly, settling for chocolate and wine and kisses to weather-beaten lips. They barely left the bed until New Years Eve, when Sebastian made a show of clambering over the takeout boxes, and the piles of discarded clothes, and dragged them up and to a party. That was where Blaine saw Trent for the first time since his wedding rehearsal, and that was where they found out about the concert.

The first fight came in February, and it floored them. There were tears, and harsh words, and Blaine screamed things he didn’t meant because he was terrified. Their insults flew back and forth until Blaine heard himself ask aloud “Why did I cancel my wedding for you?” and then there was only silence. Later, when they’d mellowed, Kurt found Blaine on the floor of the living room, back to the sofa, knees hugged to his chest.

“Do you miss him?” Kurt asked, lowering himself to sit beside Blaine but not touching, not yet. Blaine didn’t know how to answer at first, didn’t want to make it worse than it already was, but then Kurt smiled, and Blaine realized that the only thing he could offer right now was honesty.

“Of course I do” he whispered, and then, his voice louder, “not that I wish it was him here, because I don’t, not for a second. But I was going to marry him, you know? He knew everything about me, knew how I’d react at any given time, and I think I sometimes forget that you…don’t?”

Kurt nodded.

“You were going to marry him…” he repeated, and then “how did that happen, again?”

And so Blaine told the story, beginning with a concert, and two empty seats, and ending with Dan finding him on the steps of Rachel’s apartment, with them walking, with a ring and no reason to say no.

Kurt listened in wonder, as he always did when they talked about these almost-moments, thinking about how different it could have been if he’d walked a little faster, reached Rachel’s apartment a little earlier, found Blaine alone and waiting on the steps.

“Was it worth cancelling your wedding for me?” he asked later, when they were sated and spent, coming down together wrapped in a sheet and each other, and Blaine said, “I didn’t”.

“Hmmm?” Kurt asked, thinking maybe he’d heard wrong, but then Blaine took his hand, lifted it to his lips, and said “I cancelled my wedding for me”.

A few days after that, Kurt’s vogue interview made it to print, and while they celebrated, first with their friends and champagne, and later very much alone, Kurt told the story of a December night in the bar at the Empire Hotel, and Blaine made Kurt stand up, walk away from him, turn around and do it again multiple times before he decided that yes, it was definitely him that Trent was talking to just seconds before Blaine stepped out of the elevator.

“Do you think we were meant to find each other, all those other times?” Blaine asked.

“It couldn’t have ended any other way” Kurt replied, and Blaine pulled him closer, kissed him gently, said, “This story doesn’t have an ending”.

In June, they went to Chicago together for the first time. Blaine had periodically flown back and forth, always feeling anxious from the moment he left Kurt sleeping in the bed that had become theirs, always relieved when he cleared security to find Kurt waiting, but when he boarded the plane in June, Kurt was beside him, and suddenly Chicago looked brighter than it ever had.

They stayed at Puck’s apartment, and Kurt had screamed, long and loud, when he realized he’d been there before; that Noah Puckerman and Rachel Berry had known each other, vaguely, as children; that when he’d slept here all those months ago, Puck was on the other side of town celebrating Blaine’s last night as a bachelor.

Blaine introduced Kurt to Will’s class, and they took front row seats at their graduation concert. Scarlett sang A Thousand Years, and didn’t understand why her favorite teacher and his…boyfriend, she guessed, were crying silently throughout. After the show, she found them in the lobby; let herself be pulled in to a wordless hug. Later, Blaine told her she was going to be an amazing performer, and meant it. Later still, she noticed Kurt’s scarf, flipped it where it rested on his neck, saw the name on the tag and let out a long “ohhhh”. They told her the whole story, and she filled them in on yet another part they hadn’t known. She’d been wearing that scarf minutes before they sang to Blaine the first time; he’d taken it, unknowing, almost a year from here.

It could have been so different.

In September, they had a party, and that was when Kurt met Cooper for the first time. He recognized Rachel first, asking Blaine in hushed tones what the obnoxious girl from his flight (and how did he even remember that? Blaine wondered), was doing at his brother’s party?

“She’s Kurt’s best friend” Blaine had said, and then “And she isn’t obnoxious, really, once you get to know her”, and then Cooper looked again at Kurt, clapped a hand to his mouth, said “Oh woah…you were there too…”.

It overwhelmed Kurt to think that it wasn’t just them. Their families, their friends, their lives had become tangled in each other so many times, and they were still learning how. What they had felt bigger, in these moments, than boy meets boy.

And when they kissed, Kurt thought, maybe the universe smiled.

Maybe she let out a long breath, deep and full of relief that these two people, who were so clearly supposed to be together, had bypassed the masses of not here, and not now and not yet that she had thrown in their path, and they had found their place, their time, their moment.

And there they both were.

If either one of them had given up, the story may never have reached this point.

If Sebastian had gone with Kurt to the concert, maybe they would have stayed in the bubble they pretended was love, and Kurt would never have begun searching at all.

If Dan had never returned the music, such a loving gesture on a freezing cold December morning, maybe Blaine would have exiled it to the back of the wardrobe, eventually forgotten it was there, but all the while knowing Kurt could not find him.

If Finn, who knew nothing about fashion or design, hadn’t noticed that Kurt was creating something beyond lines in a sketchbook, maybe Kurt would have given up, thrown himself in to his studies at NYADA, never have needed a change of state to reunite him properly with Rachel.

If Kurt had never left in a hurry, the wrong music in his hand.

If Blaine had never walked out on his own wedding.

Blaine, who was street maps and sheet music.

Kurt, who was coffee and scarves.

The two of them together, who were fate and destiny, stars and souls. Serendipity.

And then it was Christmas again, and Kurt was dragging Blaine, hand in gloved hand, down 34th street in the snow, and how had Kurt Hummel ever thought he didn’t love this? Their boots crunched, leaving imprints behind them, two footsteps side by side saying we were here, and even when another coat fell and erased their tracks entirely, they’d exist still in the memories of the passers by who had seen the two boys holding hands, and suddenly understood love.

They bought gloves, identical pairs, leather and velvet mingling so beautifully that Blaine couldn’t decide between wearing his own, or letting his bare hand hold Kurt’s, stroking the leather, basking in the weight of their tangled fingers.

From Macy’s, they returned to the coffee shop, and although Kurt hated the thought of a medium drip, he indulged Blaine’s idea that they should swap orders, should taste their drinks of choice only on each other’s lips. There were a lot of kisses.

They walked, in no rush at all, happy to take the whole day one step at a time.

They talked about the past as they walked through Times Square. Blaine said he’d been losing himself, slow but sure, before a scarf and a reunion, and Kurt teased that as long as he had Katy Perry and Sara Bareilles, he could never be lost.

At 57th street, they passed a street vendor selling knock-off handbags, and the conversation tripped away from the past and in to the present. Kurt’s line had been a resounding success, and the initial show had been followed with commissions, and catwalks, and a whole lot more designs inspired by finding what you were looking for, and resolution, and always Blaine.

At Columbus Circle, because it was already in every word they spoke, they talked about love.

“What do you think would have happened?” Blaine asked, “If we’d never found each other”, and Kurt was silent for a second, and then a few more, before he answered, “We were always going to. It was the only way”.

The light was beginning to change as they walked towards the ice rink, and as it came in to view, they looked at each other, smiled, Kurt to Blaine and then back. They took their positions on the bench that had become somewhat holy ground, and as Kurt sighed, and let himself relax back in to Blaine’s chest, Blaine began to speak.

“When I met you, I was scared”, Blaine began, and Kurt twisted, just slightly, to look at his boyfriend as he spoke.

“I was constantly worrying that Dan would leave me, or I’d realize I wasn’t as talented as I’d assumed, and all of the good things in my life would come crashing down around me and leave me alone”.

Kurt smiled. He knew this story.

“And then I met a boy in a department store, who would have been so beautiful if only he’d smile. We grabbed a coffee, and took a walk, and shared the intimate details of our lives without really saying anything at all, and then, in the middle of the night, as the snow fell down, we kissed. And my life changed”.

Blaine leaned in, stole a quick kiss before continuing.

“I spent the next year searching for that boy. At first, I avoided any mention of New York City, pretended I didn’t care at all, but then I realized I had to know, one way or another. So I began to look. I withdrew from my relationship, questioned everything I thought I’d known about my life, fought with the people who loved me most, all because they weren’t Kurt, who knew my deepest fears but didn’t know my surname. I searched and searched, and it looked like I would never find him. And then I did. And here we are”.

Blaine moved his arm from where it was draped across Kurt’s chest, slipped quickly from the bench to the ground, positioned himself on one knee as he pulled the tiny blue velvet box from his pocket.

“You told me all that time ago that you believed in fate, and I replied that I believed in people. Kurt Hummel, I’ve never believed in anyone, or anything, more than you. Will you marry me?”

It was freezing. The branches of the trees collided in the wind; the cool air hit the ice and ricocheted towards them, flushing their cheeks. Above them, a single star could be seen peeking through the layer of atmosphere that usually shrouded the city.

They didn’t notice any of it.

Kurt reached out a hand, cupped Blaine’s cheek.

“It’s like you said Kurt” Blaine whispered, “Just say yes”.

And he did.

*

This is a story about fate.